I’ve had this problem for a while now, for the best part of two years my DC has been backing up to tape quite happily, then the fateful day comes to perform a restore and what? The file wasn’t on the backup! Or any of the last few….very odd situation.
Well, after a little researching the subject it seems that the problem was caused by our moving from a flat file structure to a basic DFS. Since the Lands End site suffers from such a pathetic internet connection we have a decent box there – it’s a BDC so can authenticate users, pass out DHCP, DNS, etc, and we even have a simple DFS configured to move all operating files up there.
And this is one of the problems with a decent sized network architecture – interoperability, or rather in this case lack of, between systems.
Flat file system = backup working fine
Introduce DFS = need to shift to backing up the Shadow Copy rather than the actual folders.
Granted not a massive amount of work required, but when you’re not a product specialist and have to search for the solution – that’s a post all on it’s own! Suffice it to say that it could have been nearly fatal if some significant files were lost – which just proves the adage, you’re only as good as your last backup (and restore).
Within BackupExec the fix is simple enough, you just need to edit the selection list of the job (I use a template, as the daily job remains the same each day) and select the DFS folders required, per screenshot below.
At least in all of this I did also manage to get the SMTP alerts working, so I should now have a nice email each morning telling me that my 100gb backup has been completed!